HOLLYWOOD continues to flirt with the issue of its nations defence
capabilities by posing the question, could terrorists actually detonate
a weapon of mass destruction on United States soil?

But the answer, while compelling at times, has somewhat been overtaken by
real events, as the memory of September 11 lingers uncomfortably in the mind
while watching The Sum Of All Fears, the latest Jack Ryan instalment.

Ben Affleck portrays the Ryan in question this time (the third actor to take
on the role after Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford) and, to be fair, does a
good job of creating a believable action hero, but the movie suffers from
bad timing, arriving on UK shores less than a month before America prepares
to mark the first anniversary of last years devastating terrorist attacks
in New York and Washington.

It is also a movie of two halves - the first being a lively, frequently entertaining
race-against-time to find and locate the bomb, while the second is a tense,
but highly improbable Mexican stand-off between the US and Russia which brings
the world to the point of nuclear war.

Sandwiched in between is one of the most jaw-dropping sequences of the year
- the detonation of said nuclear bomb in Baltimore; a moment so staggeringly
powerful that you could virtually hear audiences gasping a collective sigh
of disbelief.

It is during this moment (and the minutes afterwards), that The Sum of All
truly terrifies, before giving way to the macho posturing of men in suits
threatening to blast each other off the planet - last years Kevin Costner
thriller, 13 Days, did it far better with
fewer histrionics.

Worse still, the CIA does get to save the day and comfortably eliminate the
enemy in a way that completely overlooks the current world situation - so
while the hunt for Americas enemies continues in reality, on-screen
they are ruthlessly tracked down and killed in the type of revenge sequence
usually reserved for mobster movies.

The Sum of All Fears, therefore, also suffers from the Hollywood factor (that
need for a happy ending), while refusing to credit its audience with too much
intelligence (the cigarettes can kill metaphor is strained beyond
belief), which is a shame given the potential of its premise and cast (the
likes of Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell and Liev Schrieber provide meaty support).

According to the CIA, at least 20 countries - nearly half of them in the
Middle East and South Asia - already have or may be developing weapons of
mass destruction. Moreover, it is a matter of public record that there were
tens of thousands of them constructed and waiting on launch pads during the
Cold War. To date, according to a published report, 164 transportable warheads
remain unaccounted for.

Pitted against these statistics, and the fact that a weapon has fallen into
the wrong pair of hands, is Afflecks Ryan (looking younger, leaner and
still courting his future wife), while the powers that be in the White House
and the Kremlin play show and tell with their armouries.

But it strives too hard to have its cake and eat it, wanting to work both
as a full-on mainstream blockbuster and an intelligent take on the current
threat to world safety. On the first level, it succeeds, but on the second
it merely comes across as dumb and very naïve.

Go in with the former in mind, and you are likely to have a blast; enter
believing the latter, and you are likely to feel insulted. It is now up for
you to decide.